


Change of Scene

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Whole New Vision [1]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:45:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3172968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby's world feels like it falls in when the anomaly project goes public.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Change of Scene

            Despite the fact that the government had just publically announced that there were rips in time and space and a secret agency run with public money to control them, life on the London streets was much as normal. Nonetheless, Abby Maitland felt distinctly peculiar as she nursed an elderly Mini and a hopelessly sniffling Connor (in the backseat, with a box of tissues, a small pharmacy and a woebegone expression) through London.

 

            Perhaps it was to be expected; half her world had fallen in. Something that had been the subject of obsessive secrecy was now out in the open, raw and vulnerable; the concealment that had been part of her daily life for more than – oh God, more than six years – was gone, ripped away like a scab over new skin. Or maybe it was like a rock, flipped over to expose scurrying ants and noxious things. Abby liked this image, although it was uncomplimentary in the extreme, and she occupied the rest of the drive to the ARC with picturing Christine Johnson as a toadstool.

 

            There was a small press pack parked outside the ARC itself, soaking in the rain. Abby could see a BBC reporter drooping and a cameraman sitting half inside a van, smoking, as her car passed on its way to the ARC’s underground parking lot, disguised as the residents’ parking for a posh block of flats. There was no-one there, just Corporal Floyd on guard duty and looking morose, but whether this was because of the anomaly project’s going public or because the All Blacks had thrashed Wales the previous night, it was difficult to tell.

 

            “Hi, Scott,” Abby said. “All quiet?”

 

            “Couple of reporters asked me the way to the ARC,” Corporal Floyd shrugged, his Welsh lilt laying the scorn on with a trowel. “I said I didn’t know about any ARC, but there was some kind of government thing around the corner.”

 

            “Nice,” Abby said, and grinned. It was a bit forced.

 

             Corporal Floyd noticed, displayed unusual tact, and failed to comment on it before waving her through.

 

 

            Inside, the ARC was quiet. Some hadn’t come in to work – most hadn’t come in to work. It was only a skeleton crew, and a few who felt they should be there. Abby noticed several people who shouldn’t really have been there; some of the soldiers, for instance, who’d left the army but had been with the project from the beginning. Claudia Brown, who hadn’t been around for _years_ , and now stood on the opposite side of the big drum to Jenny Lewis and looked discomfited by her resemblance to the other woman. Stephen, and Ryan... Ian Mackie, the project’s MI5 liaison...

 

            Abby mumbled a half-hearted greeting, and commandeered the seat that was normally used by the ADD technician. Connor bumbled in, shedding throat-sweets and tissues, and ran a diagnostic on the ADD. It was a sleeker machine than it had been, testimony to Connor’s skills improving over the years and hours spent refining it to make it more efficient, give more detail, work better. Abby found herself missing the old days, when they didn’t even have a way of detecting anomalies...

 

            She mentally slapped herself. The sheer volume of death that had happened in those days, when they weren’t fast enough or strong enough, didn’t know where they were going to go next, didn’t know what they were doing, just... didn’t bear thinking about.

 

            Abby felt like her world had slowed down. She sat slumped in the computer chair, wheeling idly from side to side. Lorraine had had someone bring down tables and push them together, and now she was bringing in armfuls of newspapers and laying them out. All of them had the same story on the front page, except for the _Daily Mail_ , which was busy vilifying the government’s stand on the design of hospitals.

 

            “Lorraine,” said a long-suffering drawl from the top of the ramp, “I realise I may regret asking this question, but what are you doing?”

 

            Abby almost smiled. Sir James was trying to make it an ordinary day, and trying hard; but he couldn’t disguise the empty look on his face well enough for it to work. Lyle was standing just behind him, at his shoulder: Abby could see how much he needed the comfort. Maybe she’d been working for him too long.

 

            Lorraine looked up, and just shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said softly, her voice carrying and echoing in the silence, and she shook her head again and looked down. Blade came up behind her and slid his arms around her waist, pulling her back against his chest in the kind of open display of affection they’d never have allowed themselves in this place on any other day. Connor glanced up briefly and his eyes almost popped with the sheer shock of it. Lorraine let her eyes fall shut, leaning back into Blade’s arms, and one of her hands crept up to cup the base of his skull; Abby looked away, feeling much as if she’d walked into a stranger’s bedroom.

 

            “Hey,” Joel murmured in greeting, his large hands falling warm on her shoulders. Abby shut her eyes and smiled, then opened them again and turned, leaning up for a kiss: his lips were warm, the scratch of his stubble a welcome reminder that life existed outside the stifled air of the anomaly project, and she looped an arm around his hips so that the computer chair wheeled the few inches closer to him and bumped up against his thigh.

 

            There was a kerfuffle, and Becker and Adey marched in, a stranger sandwiched between them. The anomaly project’s members suddenly snapped to attention; Abby saw Danny and Lorraine reach for handguns that weren’t there, Blade’s fingers twitch towards his knives, Lyle focus on the stranger with a sudden, sharp intensity, felt Joel suddenly tense.

 

            “Journalist, sir,” Becker said colourlessly to Sir James. “Found him halfway out of a ventilation shaft.”  


            Judging by the man’s rumpled appearance, this was likely to be true, but despite being caught he looked almost triumphant, and Abby was inspired by a sudden urge to kick out and break something – his nose, his jaw, a window, it wouldn’t matter. She stood slowly, feeling Joel ominously still at her side.

 

            Sir James raised a long-suffering eyebrow. “Well, what did you bring him inside for?”

 

            “I intended to seek orders as to what to do with him, sir.”

 

            Sir James’ other eyebrow shot up. “You could put him in with the bambiraptor,” he suggested.

 

            Abby cleared her throat. “You can’t do that to an innocent creature, sir. And you’ll upset its diet.”

 

            “Good point well made,” Lester said, sounding exquisitely bored.

 

            “Police brutality,” the journalist chirped, grinning all over his face. “I’ll be sure to put that in my article.”

 

            Lester looked down his nose at him. “We are _not_ the police.” Somehow, there was a shadow of a threat in his words, and Lyle smiled a smile with too many teeth in it.

 

            “Shall I just escort him out to the front, sir?” Captain Becker enquired patiently.

 

            Lester nodded. “If you would be so good, captain. As matters stand, he’s doing nothing more than obstructing the workings of a vital government department.” He turned, and walked into his office, and Lyle followed him.

 

            “And you can put that in your article too, sunshine,” Danny Quinn said, determined to have the last word, his eyes as hard and unfriendly as everyone else’s.

 

            “Aren’t we in an awful mood,” the journalist taunted, and Abby had a sudden and powerful wish to feed the man to the bambiraptor, and its diet could just go hang.

 

            “Take him away, Captain,” Jenny Lewis said wearily.

 

            Captain Becker and Adey turned the journalist around and marched him away, past the Human Resources offices so he wouldn’t see anything interesting. Abby wouldn’t have put bets on Captain Becker’s walking just a bit too fast for the man to keep up comfortably, or Adey accidentally treading on his foot with size thirteen boots. It wasn’t fair to bet on a sure thing.

 

            She turned into Joel’s embrace, leaning against his chest and trying to fight the feeling of having failed, that they had not managed to keep it all a secret, that they had not protected the public well enough to prevent them needing to know about the anomalies. “Let’s run away,” she said, slightly muffled.

 

            “All right,” Joel said, easy and warm. “Where would you like to go?”

 

            “Australia,” Abby decided, and closed her eyes to stop herself crying. The world that had been theirs was now public property, and now people would start to put themselves in harm’s way: thrill-seekers, looking for anomalies to go through, poachers, taking the creatures of the past. “Lots of interesting reptiles there.”

 

            “Okay,” Joel said, holding her close, bending his head over hers, chin resting on her hair. “Okay,” and the cold that seemed to have spread to Abby’s bones retreated a little.

 

***

           

            “I like it,” Joel said, smiling with his eyes half-shut against the glare of the sunlight spilling into the café, and ordered a beer for himself and a Coke for Abby.

 

            Abby grinned at him. “Me too.”

 

            “Would you like to live here?” Joel asked matter-of-factly, and Abby stared at him. He reached over, and took her hand, rubbing his thumb gently over her knuckles, her engagement ring sliding from side to side on her finger. “I’ve been thinking,” he told her, and in his blue eyes she saw the shadows of the media frenzy, the sudden hike in casualties caused by curious people who no longer had the fear of the unknown to stop them, even the pterodactyl egg, stolen and carefully blown, that Abby had personally confiscated from a teenaged boy who refused to understand what he’d done wrong. “Perhaps it’s time to go.”

 

            She turned her hand over, and squeezed his fingers. “I could do with a change of scene.”           


End file.
